In the prior art, vacuum packaging of food products in flexible, pliable containers is taught in U.S. Pat. No. 2,623,826 issued on Dec. 30, 1952 to Sanford R. Grinstead, and the cooking of food products and their storage in plastic containers is taught in U.S. Pat. No. 3,262,787 issued on July 26, 1966 to E. D. Ellis. Also, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,607,312 issued on Sept. 21, 1971 to C. A. Ready there is taught a method of preparing and preserving ready-to-eat food by vacuum packaging the food in a gas-tight pouch, cooking the food in the pouch by immersing it in hot water, rapidly chilling the food to about 30.degree. F. but not freezing it, storing the food at 30.degree. F. until needed for consumption, and heating it in hot water to serving temperatures. However, in each of the heretofore used methods of cooking and cooling packaged food it has been found that for bulk packages of food of ten pounds or more that, depending upon the food item packaged, up to four hours or more is required to cook and cool the contents of the bulk package; and, after cold storage, a correspondingly long period of time was required to heat the food item up to serving temperatures. Accordingly, it is one object of the present invention to provide a method of reducing the time for cooking, cooling, and reheating bulk packaged food items.
Also in the prior art, methods have been devised to aid in quickly cooking or cooling a food product by flowing gas or liquid therearound. Two such prior art methods are shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,304,689 issued on Feb. 21, 1967 to H. G. Reichel and in U.S. Pat. No. 3,092,975 issued on June 11, 1963 to R. S. Zebarth. However, these prior art methods are employed with relatively rigid products or packages which do not have a means to improve heat transfer from the interior of the product. Accordingly, it is another object of the present invention to provide a method of increasing the heat transfer to and from the interior of bulk food products packaged for storage.
A further object of the present invention is to provide a method for quickly chilling bulk packaged food from its cooking and packaging temperature in order to restrict bacterial growth.
A still further object is to provide a method of cooking and storing food in which the cooking conditions may be closely controlled.
These and other objects will become apparent to those skilled in the art from the following summary of invention and detailed description.